Will GRE writing be really important in Graduate school application?

[huyibodtc]

I heard that GRE writing was not important in especially engineering graduate school application, but recently found out that it might be rather important. Which one is the truth?

 

 

[1Q84]

The answer, as always: it depends. 

I spoke to one school the other day that said that GRE scores are quite important in terms of what the wider graduate admission committee wants before they send the application to the individual departments.

 

Another school I spoke to said that the GRE scores go directly to the department only and, in his words, they couldn't give two hoots about GRE scores.

 

So, your best bet is to call the graduate admissions department and ask them yourself.

[biotechie]

I will give you two reasons why this is important:

 

1. The ability to write well, in general, is extremely important in graduate school. The GRE tests to see if you are able to write in a specific way, but also that you can use proper sentence structure, punctuation, and follow grammar and spelling rules. While you may not have to write essays using the structure in the GRE, the latter part that I mentioned in the previous sentence is going to be important. You need to be able to write well to express your ideas and conclusions in an interesting, informative, and convincing manner. Not only is this important in graduate school, but also in your future career, even if you're not in academia.

 

2. Graduate schools are using the GRE as a whole to get an idea of how you could fare at their institution, and the writing part of the GRE is used to make sure you can appropriately communicate in a written form. Like I said before, you might not be writing in that way for school, but it is the easiest way to get an idea before they try and review your application. In some cases, where a writing sample is not required outside of the personal statement, that score on your GRE is the only information they get about your writing ability!

[GeoDUDE!]

You should take everything the graduate program asks for admission seriously.

[Roll Right]

The GRE is important for all the reasons already mentioned. There is another reason it is important, though. I learned this from graduate directors while I was applying to PhD programs many years ago.

 

Graduate schools receive hundreds of applications per year. This is especially true of those in the highest rank. It would be a ridiculous task to compare all of these applications in order to identify a few of the most qualified students. In order to reduce the size of the task, graduate programs often use the GRE as an initial yardstick, with applications above a certain score receiving priority reviews, and applications below a certain score receiving less attention.

 

That is why the GRE is important. It is your chance to put your "foot in the door", so to speak.

 

Having said that, I did horribly on the GRE and I'm in a strong program. So, don't think a low GRE score will keep you out of graduate school.

[Chianti]

It only shows how well you take the exam, not how strong of a writer you actually are. (That was my mantra while waiting for scores to come in.) Given that your field is mechanical engineering, the quant section is probably the most important for your application. That being said, as the other posters mentioned, still take it seriously and see how well you can do.

[drownsoda]

The GRE is just a formality and I think it's inherently problematic within the higher education system, but I also can understand the use of it in terms of "filtering," especially in large-volume programs that get huge numbers of applicants. 

 

At the end of the day, the answer, I think, as 1Q84 said, is that it depends. The thing about writing is that no matter what you're studying, you're ALWAYS going to have to have good writing skills in grad school. Clearly, humanities programs will expect more of your writing than math or engineering perhaps, but it's still important that you have a solid foundation for academic writing in virtually every field. 

 

This is just me inferring, but I'd think that if someone scored under a 3.0 on the writing, then it may hurt an application.

 

That said, I was reading the GRE averages for one of the schools I applied to, and was surprised by the fact that the average writing score in the English department was a 4.0 for M.A. students, and a 4.5 for PhD students. It made me feel slightly better because, although my verbal score was a couple points under their average, I scored a 5.0 on the writing, which means I did better than the bulk of their PhD students (and I'm applying to the M.A. program).

[Vene]

At the end of the day, the answer, I think, as 1Q84 said, is that it depends. The thing about writing is that no matter what you're studying, you're ALWAYS going to have to have good writing skills in grad school. Clearly, humanities programs will expect more of your writing than math or engineering perhaps, but it's still important that you have a solid foundation for academic writing in virtually every field. 

I fully agree that writing is important in every field, but I disagree on the utility of AW for every field. The kind of writing I do is very different from the AW portion of the test and if I were to follow scientific writing conventions I'd get a terrible score on it. Likewise, if I followed AW conventions when doing scientific writing I'd be told it needs a massive rewrite. I honestly believe the Verbal portion is a better indicator for us as that has a lot more to do with logic and analyzing arguments.

[Maxtini]

Maybe this will help~

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3923635/
 

Abstract

We use many quantitative undergraduate metrics to help select our graduate students, but which of these usefully discriminate successful from underperforming students and which should be ignored? Almost everyone has his or her own pet theory of the most predictive criteria, but I hoped to address this question in a more unbiased manner. I conducted a retrospective analysis of the highest- and lowest-ranked graduate students over the past 20 years in the Tetrad program at the University of California at San Francisco to identify undergraduate metrics that significantly differed between these groups. Only the number of years of research experience and subject graduate record exams (GREs) were strong discriminators between the highest- and lowest-ranked students, whereas many other commonly used admissions metrics (analytical, verbal, and quantitative GREs, grade point average, and ranking of undergraduate institution) showed no correlation with graduate performance. These are not necessarily the same criteria that matter at other graduate programs, but I would urge faculty elsewhere to conduct similar analyses to improve the admissions process and to minimize the use of useless metrics in selecting our students.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Maxtini

[expandyourmind]

In my experience they only really look at quant and verbal, but like not even that much. i have very poor GRE scores and somewhat mediocre grades (especially in undergrad biology!) for the places I was applying to, but my experience in my application boosted it up. depending on the program, it may hold different weight. I've noticed that it won't necessarily get you INTO places, but it will definitely keep you OUT of schools. but overall its a very weak and overrated piece of the application that could actually screw you over in the end. i personally think that as long as you have solid relevant experience and a good SoP/grades, you'll be fine. but my shitty GRE scores were never really a problem. 

[eeee1923]

I heard that GRE writing was not important in especially engineering graduate school application, but recently found out that it might be rather important. Which one is the truth?

 

Among the top applicants and especially in programs with many international applicants, the Quant and verbal sections tend to be very similar (>90 percentile), so many programs use the writing as a sort of filter (80+ percentile) to seriously consider applicants. In general, at the graduate level one would have to do a lot of writing, so YES - writing is important. 

[brown_eyed_girl]

Among the top applicants and especially in programs with many international applicants, the Quant and verbal sections tend to be very similar (>90 percentile), so many programs use the writing as a sort of filter (80+ percentile) to seriously consider applicants. In general, at the graduate level one would have to do a lot of writing, so YES - writing is important. 

 

For international applicants especially, I think the AW section can provide an unfiltered look at someone's writing skills. Statements of purpose, writing samples, etc. have the potential to be heavily edited by a native speaker or extensively gone over with a thesaurus, while the AW relies on inherent knowledge. If your SOP is written in academic English but you get a very low AW score, that could be a red flag that you didn't write it yourself.